Georgia on My Mind

In the wake of President-elect Barack Obama’s Electoral College landslide, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid crowed, “a permanent change has taken place.” That was then.

Today, Republicans are trumpeting Sen. Saxby Chambliss' double-digit victory over Jim Martin in the Georgia Senate runoff. Chambliss won 57 percent to Martin’s 43 percent.

Voter turnout was light in an election that turned on voters showing up. And as surely as night follows day, the mainstream media blame black voters.

The Washington Post reports:

Martin appeared to suffer from a lower turnout among African Americans. Fewer than a quarter of people who cast ballots early in the runoff were black, compared with more than a third in the November vote. Black voters overwhelmingly favored Obama and Martin.

And this from the New York Times:

A little more than two million people voted in the runoff, compared with 3.7 million on Nov. 4. In heavily black Clayton County, just south of Atlanta, Mr. Martin’s vote was less than half what it was in the earlier election. Only 9.2 percent of registered Georgians cast early votes in the runoff, compared with 36 percent in the general election.

The Los Angeles Times offered this:

Lesson for Democrats: Figure out some way to get the African American voters to come out a second time for the white guy.

Black voters were not motivated to "come out" for Martin who had dissed Obama in the Georgia presidential primary election.

During the 2002 Senate runoff election, then-Louisiana state senator Cleo Fields told Sen. Mary Landrieu, “If you don’t respect us, don’t expect us.”

While Chambliss brought in Sarah Palin to mobilize the base, Martin held a rally with Ludacris. Talk about a ludicrous get-out-the-vote plan.

As Ludacris would say, “It wasn’t us.”